CHAPTER IX

MIGRATION TO THE NEW WORLD

9.1 The Migration

The emigration from Europe to North America started in the early 1600s. After more
than three centuries, the migration grew up from just a few hundred English settler to millions
of emigrants. The majority of European emigrants moved to North America for various
reasons. Some of them want to seek the freedom to practice their religion, run away from
political oppression, or just for adventure. Besides that, from 1620 until 1635, economic crisis
struck England. The Industrial Revolution created a developing textile industry, which more
wool supply needed to keep the looms running. Landlords switched their farmlands to sheep
cultivation and dismissed the peasants.
The settlers’ first glance of the new land was a view of dense woods. The settlers could
survive because of friendly Indian. They taught the immigrants how to grow native plants such
as beans, pumpkins, corn, and squash. Even though the new land was remarkably gifted by
nature, the settlers still need to trade with Europe for articles that they could not produce. The
coast provided the immigrants so many inlets and harbors. North Carolina and southern New
Jersey were the only area that lacked of harbors for ocean-going vessels.
Mostly people move to America influenced by political consideration. Arbitrary rule by
King Charles I of England in 1630s, gave impulse to the migration to the New World. In the
17th century, the following triumph of Charles’ opponents under the coming of colonists
required cautious planning and management, as well as reasonable expense and risk. Emigrants
had to be shipped almost 5000 kilometers across the sea and they needed utensils, tools, clothes,
seed, livestock’s, building materials, weapon, and ammo. Different from the other countries
colonization policies, England emigration was not directly funded by the government but by
private groups of individuals, whose primary motive was profit.

a. The Thirteen Colonies

In the 17th century, the main wave of settlement arrived. Jamestown, near Chesapeake
Bay was the first successful English colony, established in May 14, 1607. The London Virginia
Company, a joint stock looking for gold, sponsored this project. The early years were very
difficult, with high mortality rates from illness and starvation, battles with the native Indians.
The colony survived and thrived by changed tobacco as a currency. Virginia’s export
commodity in the late 17th century was dominated by tobacco and richer newcomer takeover
large part of large plantations and bring indentured slaves.
The second period colonial settlement covered a long narrow area, stretching from
Georgia to Maine. This land was well-known divided into three major parts, the South Atlantic
States, New England, and the Middle Atlantic States.
New England settlement made up of various crown colonies such as Colony of Rhode
Islands and Province Plantations, later Rhode Island; Province of Massachusetts Bay, later
Massachusetts and Maine; Province of New Hampshire, later New Hampshire; and
Connecticut Colony, later Connecticut. The first New England colonies were settled around
Massachusetts Bay. Between 1620 and 1640 interval, 200 vessels brought 15,000 immigrants
from England to New England. The citizens kept growing and pushed the coast then founded
new colonies. Furthermore, a great fight by the Indian caused settlement in New Hampshire
grew slowly.
Middle Atlantic States settlement made up of two crown colonies: Province of New
York (later New York and Vermont) and Province of New Jersey (later New Jersey)—and two
proprietary settlement: Province of Pennsylvania (later Pennsylvania) and Delaware Colony
(later Delaware). Dutch inhabited New York area; even so, regarding the small size of
Netherland, massive immigration to America was prohibited. English was wholly occupied
New Jersey while the Quakers from England inhabited Delaware. Pennsylvania had a various
inhabitant of Scots-Irish, German, English Quakers, and some Welsh. After being prosecuted
in 18th century, Protestants in the districts along Rhine also came to America in large number.
Most of them settled in Pennsylvania and then went up to Lehigh and Susquehanna and retain
their own language.
South Atlantic State colonies consisted of one proprietary colony—Province of
Maryland (later Maryland)—and four crown colonies—Colony and Dominion of Virginia
(later Virginia, Kentucky, and West Virginia), Province of North Carolina (later North Carolina
and Tennessee), Province of South Carolina (later South Carolina) and Province of Georgia
(later Georgia, northern sections of Alabama and Mississippi). The nucleus of the South
Atlantic was the tidewater district of Virginia. Beginning with the founding of Jamestown in
1607, the colony attracted a miscellaneous group of adventurers from all parts of England. In
South Carolina, the settlers were joined by a large number of French Huguenots. Georgia,
which settled late, was originally colonized by English debtors who, it was hope, might succeed
if given a fresh start in a new country. Mostly the interior of South Atlantic State was largely
settled by Scots-Irish and German. The settlement of this region illustrated strikingly the spread
and intermingling of elements in the populations of the original thirteen colonies.

b. Failure of Crops in Ireland

Ireland’s rural population had rapidly grown in the Nineteenth Century. This was
because a large family was an insurance of continued sustenance in later life – children would
take care of their parents. However, this also meant that large families needed large amounts
of food and the land situation in Ireland was not geared to support families in this respect.
Potatoes were the staple diet of the rural population of Ireland. However, this crop was very
vulnerable to disease and no cure existed in Ireland for the dreaded ‘potato blight’. Even if a
cure had existed, the people on the land would not have been able to afford it.
In 1844, a new form of potato blight was identified in America. It basically turned a
potato into a mushy mess that was completely inedible. The American blight was first identified
in France and the Isle of Wight in 1845. The summer of 1845 was mild but very wet in Britain.
It was almost the perfect weather conditions for the blight to spread. The blight is still with us
and is called ‘Phytophthora Infestans’ – an air carried fungus.
The people of Ireland expected a good potato crop in 1845. The weather had appeared
to be favourable and in many senses, the farming community of Ireland expected a bumper
harvest. However, when it came to digging up the potatoes, all they got was a black gooey
mess. In fact, the expected bumper crop turned out to be a disaster. There was a 50% loss of
potatoes in this year. The rural community had no way of countering this. Each family grew
what they needed for that year and few had any to keep for times of trouble. In fact, the problem
got worse. The crop of 1846 was all but a total failure and there was a very poor harvest in
1847. Three disastrous years in succession presented Ireland with huge problems.
The advice given to those affected by the potato blight bordered on the absurd. One
scientist advised people to get hold of chloric acid and manganese dioxide. This mixture should
have been been added to salt and applied to the diseased area of the potato. The government in
London initially decided to do nothing. The logic behind such a decision was that Ireland had
suffered from potato famines before and would have the necessary knowledge on how best to
get by in this case. However, by 1846 it was plain that this was no ‘ordinary’ famine. Sir Robert
Peel, despite opposition from the Treasury, imported £100,000 worth of corn. By 1846,
£3,500,000 worth of potatoes had been lost - therefore, the government's initial aid was well
below what was needed.
Peel believed that if this corn was released onto the Irish market in stages, it would keep
down the price of other foods. This actually worked reasonably well but it also showed the lack
of knowledge that existed in London with regards to Ireland. While Peel was at least doing
something to help, he also had little knowledge of the country he was trying to help. The corn
was welcomed as better than nothing. However, there were very few mills of any sort in Ireland,
so simply grinding it down into flour was very difficult. Many people in Ireland became
seriously ill by attempting to eat the corn without it having been ground down. As a result of
this, the corn sent to Ireland by Peel became nicknamed "Peel’s Brimstone".
The government also tried to help by establishing public work schemes and road
building projects in an effort to create employment so that some families got some money. The
government also established emergency fever hospitals in Ireland to care for those who could
not afford any medical treatment.
However, two issues hampered any work done by the government: 1) The general view
in Westminster of the Irish was simply that they were not worth the effort and that anything
that happened there was their fault; 2) The government also was driven by free trade. There
were those who argued that if the Irish could not survive on the way they lived, then they should
fall by the wayside. Free Trade meant the survival of the fittest.
Between 1846 and 1850, the population of Ireland dropped by 2 million which
represented 25% of the total population. This figure of 2 million can by effectively split in two.
One million died of starvation or the diseases associated with the famine and one million
emigrated to North America or parts of England, such as Liverpool, and Scotland, such as
Glasgow. Many found that the areas where they settled in Britain were not welcoming as the
Irish were seen as people who undercut wages. Therefore, employers in mainland factories
were willing to employ the Irish at the expense of the English/Scots. However, many of the
Irish who settled in industrial cities were completely unprepared for work in factories having
spent their time working in a rural environment.
Ireland continued to suffer de-population after the famine ended. Many young Irish
families saw their futures in America and not Ireland. This affected Ireland as those who were
most active and who could contribute the most to Ireland, left the country.

c. The Failure of German Revolution

In the middle of the 19th century, Germany (and many other parts of Europe) had
reached a stage where the shears between the social, cultural, and economical situation on the
one hand and the political reality on the other were widely open. Whether the beginning
industrial revolution had brought about or only accelerated the liberal movement in Germany
is an interesting and controversial historical question that must be left aside here. Regardless
of the answer, in the years proceeding the revolution Germany was in a situation where the
suppression of democratic principles such as freedom of the press, democratic representation
in the legislature, and the independence of the judicature could only hardly be maintained by
the ruling alliance of nobles and military.
A revolt in Paris between the 22nd and 24th of February 1848 not only led to the
overturn of King Louis Phillip and his regime but soon turned out to be the final trigger leading
the situation in Germany to explode. Only a few days later the first uprising began as a
spontaneously organized peasant revolts in the South-West (Baden) of Germany and in
Bavaria. Wave-like, the revolution spread over the metropolitan areas in the Rhine-land to the
political and military head of Prussia in Berlin. Surprised and overthrown by the strength of
the movement many monarchs declared their willingness to install most of the basic democratic
principles demanded.
On March 5th, soon after these first uprisings, the liberal leaders and intellectual fathers
of the revolution met in Heidelberg to discuss further steps to institutionalize the revolutionary
changes obtained so far. It was decided upon that a provisional government should meet in
Frankfurt to prepare a general election and to begin the work on a new, liberal constitution.
This provisional government had its constituting session on March 31st and was eventually
replaced by an elected legislative body on May18th
A year only after the beginning of the revolution the King had recovered enough of its
military and political strength to state in public that only God and not the people or any
legislative body could decide upon his crown. The failed revolution was followed by a period
of political repression. Many of the former leaders of the movement were suspended from their
duties and had to suffer under the repression organized by the monarch’s secret policy.

d. Gold Rush
The discovery of gold flakes in the California in early 1848 sparked the Gold Rush,
arguably one of the most significant events to shape American history during the first half of
the 19th century. The gold flakes was firstly found by a carpenter while he was working to
build a water-powered sawmill. Though he tried to keep news of the discovery under wraps,
word got out, and by mid-March at least one newspaper was reporting that large quantities of
gold were being turned up at the site. By mid-June, some three-quarters of the male population
of San Francisco had left town for the gold mines, and the number of miners in the area reached
4,000 by August. As news spread of the fortunes being made in California, the first migrants
to arrive were those from lands accessible by boat, such as Oregon, Hawaii, Mexico, Chile,
Peru and even China. Only later would the news reach the East Coast, where press reports were
initially skeptical.
Throughout 1849, people around the United States (mostly men) borrowed money,
mortgaged their property or spent their life savings to make the arduous journey to California.
In pursuit of the kind of wealth they had never dreamed of, they left their families and
hometowns; in turn, women left behind took on new responsibilities such as running farms or
businesses and caring for their children alone. Thousands of would-be gold miners, traveled
overland across the mountains or by sea, sailing to Panama or even around Cape Horn, the
southernmost point of South America. The populations of non-native California suddenly
explode.
To accommodate the need of the miners, gold mining towns had sprung up all over the
region, complete with shops, saloons, brothels and other businesses seeking to make their own
Gold Rush fortune. The overcrowded chaos of the mining camps and towns grew ever more
lawless, including rampant banditry, gambling, prostitution and violence. San Francisco, for
its part, developed a bustling economy and became the central metropolis of the new frontier.
The Gold Rush undoubtedly sped up California's admission to the Union as the 31st
state. In late 1849, California applied to enter the Union with a constitution preventing slavery,
provoking a crisis in Congress between proponents of slavery and abolitionists. After 1850, the
surface gold in California largely disappeared, even as miners continued to arrive. Mining had
always been difficult and dangerous labor, and striking it rich required good luck as much as
skill and hard work.
 Moreover, the average daily take for an independent miner working with his pick and
shovel had by then sharply decreased from what it had been in 1848. As gold became more and
more difficult to reach, the growing industrialization of mining drove more and more miners
from independence into wage labor. The new technique of hydraulic mining, developed in
1853, brought enormous profits but destroyed much of the region's landscape.

9.2 American English

,at 1775-1776 in the winter, , the increasingly reconciliation between the member of continental
congress with Britain was doubtful, . And the only one way that they could take is the independence.
, the colonies was prohibited to make a trade with the British parliament. The congress reacted by
opening colonial port in April of 1776- this was the way to severing ties with Britain.
Throughout the winter of 1775–1776, the members of Continental Congress
increasingly viewed reconciliation with Britain as unlikely and independence the only course
of action available to them When on December 22, 1775 the British Parliament prohibited trade
with the colonies, Congress responded in April of 1776 by opening colonial ports—this was a
major step towards severing ties with Britain. The colonists were aided by the January
publication of Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense, which advocated the colonies’
independence and was widely distributed throughout the colonies. By February of 1776,
colonial leaders were discussing the possibility of forming foreign alliances and began to draft
the Model Treaty that would serve as a basis for the 1778 alliance with France. Leaders for the
cause of independence wanted to make certain that they had sufficient congressional support
before they would bring the issue to the vote. On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee introduced
a motion in Congress to declare independence. Other members of Congress were amenable but
thought some colonies not quite ready. However, Congress did form a committee to draft a
declaration of independence and assigned this duty to Thomas Jefferson.
Benjamin Franklin and John Adams reviewed Jefferson’s draft. They preserved its
original form, but struck passages likely to meet with controversy or skepticism, most notably
passages blaming King George III for the transatlantic slave trade and those blaming the British
people rather than their government. The committee presented the final draft before Congress
on June 28, and Congress adopted the final text of the Declaration of Independence on July 4.
By issuing the Declaration of Independence, adopted by the Continental Congress on
July 4, 1776, the 13 American colonies severed their political connections to Great Britain. The
Declaration summarized the colonists’ motivations for seeking their independence, by which
American English is legalized.

9.3 Pidgin and Creole in America

A pidgin is a system of communication which has grown up among people who do not
share a common language, but who need to communicate, usually for reasons of trade. In other
words, it is a lingua franca that consists of a hybrid language, greatly reduced in grammatical
and lexical structure, developed as a consequence of contact between two or more speech
communities. A creole is a pidgin language which has become the mother tongue of a
community. It develops the syntactic, lexical, and morphological sophistication required by
any language functioning as the primary language of a speech community. The settlement from
many countries to America caused many pidgins formed such as Yankee, Cajun and Dagoes.

a. Yankee
Yankee is the Dutch name Janke, meaning "little Jan" or "little John," a nickname that
dates back to the 1680s. The word Yankee came from a British general named James Wolfe,
he used it first in 1758 when he was commanding some New England soldiers:
"I can afford you two companies of Yankees, and the more because they are better for ranging
and scouting than either work or vigilance."
During the American Revolution, American soldiers adopted this term of derision as a
term of national pride. The derisive use nonetheless remained alive and even intensified in the
South during the Civil War, when it referred not to all Americans but to those loyal to the
Union. Yankee is a pidgin which came from the mixing of Dutch, English, and American. The
American author E. B. White came up with a funny summary of how to keep the term straight.
It shows how, in the end, who is and isn't a Yankee is all about the geographic perspective:
 To foreigners, a Yankee is an American.
 To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner.
 To Northerners, a Yankee is an Easterner.
 To Easterners, a Yankee is a New Englander.
 To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter.
 And in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast.

b. Cajun
Cajuns is a variety or dialect of the French language spoken primarily in the Acadiana
region of Louisiana. French influence remains strong in terms of inflection and vocabulary,
and the accent is quite distinct from the General American. It originates in the language spoken
by the French and Acadian people who settled in Louisiana from its early period of European
colonization in the 17th century through later waves of immigration into the late 19th century.

c. Dagoes
The word 'dago' is a derivative of the Spanish name 'Diego', which means 'James'. It
was originally coined in the 17th century by British sailors to indicate Spanish or Portuguese
people, especially sailors. Despite the Hispanic origin of the word, in the 19th century the word
'dago' became more commonly used in the USA as a derogatory term for Italians, due to the
large immigration from that country. However, it is still used to indicate Spanish or Portuguese
people as well, but rarely the French.

9.4 Noah Webster and Mark Twain

After the Revolution, Americans began to take pride in their own form of English. Noah
Webster (1758-1843) was the major early proponent of American meanings and spellings over
British ones and published the earliest American dictionary, An American Dictionary of the
English Language (1828). During the years since Webster, language differences have
continued to develop, demonstrating the truth of George Bernard Shaw's often repeated
observation that the two nations are "divided by a common language." Like the American
language, the earliest American literature copied English models. However, after the
Revolution and the War of 1812, writers were eager to create a distinctly American literature.
The first person who give a huge influence to American language and literature is Noah
Webster (1758-1843). He was a lexicographer, textbook pioneer, English-language spelling
reformer, political writer, editor, and prolific author. The first Dictionary which published by
him in 1806 made him called as “The Father of American Dicitonary.” This book was the book
that most of American people grew up with and still use today.
Webster began his career as a schoolteacher and recognized a need for a quality
teaching tool for children learning grammar and spelling. The Revolutionary War had just
ended, and Webster also felt there was a need to create a national language in America, a
language distinct from that spoken in the former British motherland that they were trying to
separate themselves from. Americans were already speaking their own unique
"Americanisms," words influenced from Native American and African words and repurposed
or revived British English words. Webster wanted to make sure, however, that all Americans
were speaking the same words, and spelling them and pronouncing them the same way. This
would be the unifying force that would connect a country that already at that time was
linguistically and ethnically diverse. He published his grammar books starting in 1783, which
included a speller, grammar, and reader.
His grammar book titled “Grammatical Institute of the English Language,” published
at Hartford in 1783. In the same year, he set forth his ideas for the second time in the first
edition of his “American Spelling Book.” The influence of this spelling book was immediate
and profound.
The appearance of Webster’s first dictionary, the Compendious Dictionary of the
English Language, in 1806, greatly strengthened his influence. Later on, Webster had to meet
formidable critics, at home as well as abroad, but for nearly a quarter of a century he reigned
almost unchallenged. Edition after edition of his dictionary was published, each new one
showing additions and improvements. Finally, in 1828, he printed his great “American
Dictionary of the English Language,” in two large octavo volumes. It held the field for half a
century, not only against Worcester and the other American lexicographers who followed him,
but also against the best dictionaries produced in England. Until the appearance of the Concise
Oxford in 1914, indeed, America remained far ahead of England in practical dictionary making.
Webster had declared boldly for simpler spellings in his early spelling books; in his
dictionary of 1806 he made an assault at all arms upon some of the dearest prejudices of English
lexicographers. Grounding his wholesale reforms upon a saying by Franklin, that “those people
spell best who do not know how to spell” i.e., who spell phonetically and logically—he made
an almost complete sweep of whole classes of silent letters—the u in the -our words, the final
e in determine and requisite, the silent a in thread, feather and steady, the silent b in thumb, the
s in island, the o in leopard, and the redundant consonants in traveler, wagon, jeweler, etc.
(English: traveller, waggon, jeweller). More, he transposed the e and the r in many words
ending in re, such as theatre, lustre, centre and calibre. Yet more, he changed the c in all words
of the defence class to s. Furthermore, he changed ph to f in words of the phantom class, ou to
oo in words of the group class, ow to ou in crowd, porpoise to porpess, acre to aker, sew to soe,
woe to wo, soot to sut, gaol to jail, and plough to plow. Finally, he antedated the simplified
spellers by inventing a long list of boldly phonetic spellings, ranging from tung for tongue to
wimmen for women, and from hainous for heinous to cag for keg.
In 1828 edition of his dictionary, he revised it and went back to crowd, feather, group,
island, instead, leopard, sew, soot, steady, thread, threat, thumb and women, and changed
gillotin to guillotin. In addition, he restored the final e in determine, discipline, requisite,
imagine, etc. In 1838, revising his dictionary, he abandoned a good many spellings that had
appeared in either the 1806 or the 1828 edition, notably maiz for maize, suveran for sovereign
and guillotin for guillotine.
Another person who influenced American Language and Literature is Samuel
Langhorne Clemens also known as Mark Twain (1835-1910). He well known as an Author,
poet, and humorist. He wrote one of the Great American Novel entitled The Adventures of
Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885).
Early 19th-century American writers tended to be too flowery, sentimental, or
ostentatious partially because they were still trying to prove that they could write as elegantly
as the English. Twain's style, based on vigorous, realistic, colloquial American speech, gave
American writers a new appreciation of their national voice. Twain was the first major author
to come from the interior of the country, and he captured its distinctive, humorous slang and
iconoclasm.
For Twain and other American writers of the late 19th century, realism was not merely
a literary technique: It was a way of speaking truth and exploding worn-out conventions. Thus
it was profoundly liberating and potentially at odds with society. Twain's masterpiece, “The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” which appeared in 1885, is set in the Mississippi River
village of St. Petersburg, it was a fictional town that inspired from the city where he lived,
Hannibal, Missouri.
Mark Twain also gave a great impact to American literature with his style of writing.
He was one of the first travel writers and many agree he is the best humorist ever. He wrote in
a way that spoke to the average person. Not only that, He also influenced American literature
to a great degree. He helped to shape modern American literature. Often, lots of people consider
him to be one of the superstars of modern-day literature. Some people even go so far as to say
that all modern American literature stems from him.
Adventures of Huckleberry Fin, generally considered Twain's greatest work, was
published in the United Kingdom in 1884 and in the United States in 1885. Twain had begun
the book in 1876 as a sequel to Tom Sawyer. It describes the adventures of two runaways the
boy Huck Finn and the black slave Jim and is told from the point of view of Huck himself.
Twain used realistic language in the novel, making Huck's speech sound like actual
conversation and imitating a variety of dialects to bring the other characters to life. Tom Sawyer
also reappears in certain chapters, and his antics provide the familiar humor for which Twain
was known.
Twain's story about Huck Finn, the son of a town drunkard, became a controversial
book. Huck's casual morals and careless grammar disturbed many readers in Twain's time, and
the Concord, Massachusetts, Free Public Library banned the novel in 1885. Some people have
continued to dislike the novel because of Huck's unrefined manners and language. In addition,
some modern readers object to Huck's simple acceptance of the principles of slavery and his
use of racial stereotypes and the insulting term "nigger." However, for his time, Twain was
liberal on racial issues. The deeper themes of Huckleberry Finn argue for the fundamental
equality and universal aspirations of people of all races.
Twain’s influence as a master of the vernacular was also demonstrated by Ellison’s
friend and fellow novelist Saul Bellow. Bellow’s first two novels were small-scale “literary”
works. But his third novel, The Adventures of Augie March (1953), whose very title is a kind
of tribute to Twain, was a major breakthrough in his career. It is a large, sprawling book,
narrated in the lively, slangy, very American voice of Augie himself, and filled with vivid
characters and both grotesque and hilarious incidents.
A hundred years after his death, another demonstration of Twain’s influence came in 1996 with
the publication of the Oxford Mark Twain, a twenty-nine volume set of all the books Twain
published in his lifetime. Each volume contains an introduction by a leading contemporary
author, some of whom describe Twain’s importance in their discovery of